Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

What is two plus two?

Hmm. Someone is talking right now. They should stop doing that. It’s quiet for a lingering moment like the voice actually heard him, then-

What is two plus two?

Rude.

Fine, if the only way to get a little peace and quiet is to answer a kindergarten question, he’ll answer it. Two plus two equals- “Hnnfl.” 

Oh. That’s not right. 

He was supposed to say four, not…hnnfl. 

Incorrect. What is two plus two? The voice repeats.

Why didn’t it come out right? He frowns, or tries to at least, feeling out the edges of his body. It’s shockingly dull, numbness echoing back to him. At least now he seems to know why it didn’t come out right as his mind maps out the heaviness of his tongue and the lazy way it sits in his mouth. 

Okay, let’s try this again. He’s more aware, conscious of the fact that the word is going to fight him. Attempt two. “Flllhh-urr.”

Incorrect. What is two plus two?

That was better though. Better is progress. Speaking of progress, he made a new discovery: his eyes are closed. Forcing them open is…unpleasant. The bright white light of the room brings reflexive tears to his eyes, but he forces himself to wait it out as the world slowly sharpens. 

When it finally comes into focus, he finds that he’s on his back in a white room, staring up at a large robotic arm tipped with a rubber-padded claw.

Huh. 

Hello question-asker. The robotic intonation is suddenly much clearer in his mind - he’s been talking to the arm. Or the computer behind the arm.

“Ffooo-ur.” He croaks out, voice wobbling around the syllables. His throat is dry, like he’s been sleeping with his mouth open too long. It’s…unpleasant. He twitches his fingers, feeling them respond in jumpy movements.

Correct. The voice congratulates before rolling over any sense of accomplishment he might have. What is the cube root of eight?

“Whe-Where am I?” He coughs, voice coming out a little stronger. He can’t make out the sound of anyone else moving around, but someone should be coming to get him now that he’s awake, right?

Incorrect. What is the cube root of eight? 

He can’t stop a wave of fussiness from bubbling up in his chest at the repetition. Robots aren’t the only ones who can be difficult. “Two times e to the two-i-pi.”

Incorrect. What is the cube root of eight?

But he wasn’t wrong. Math is built in overlapping circles like that. There are plenty of ways to get to the same answer. He just wanted to see how smart his robotic buddy is. Turns out: not very. Whatever program is running the arm is only as smart as it’s been told to be which makes this a simple binary conversation. Yes, no. Right answer, wrong answer. 

“Two.”

Correct.

Well, that’s one thing solved. Now for the rest.

Sitting up is a less than graceful process consisting mostly of wiggling until he can get his head propped up enough to look around. There’s not much to see. 

It’s a strangely shaped room, taller than it is wide, with padded white material covering the walls and floors featurelessly. A ladder disappears into the ceiling on the far wall behind two pods stacked up vertically towards the ceiling. Probably three pods all together, if the bed he’s laying on is any indication.

Three beds. Two more people.

What is your name? The voice asks, robotic arm cocked over his head.

“H-hey.” He calls out, forcing his voice louder as he watches the pods for any sign of movement. “Other people. Wake up.”

Incorrect. The voice repeats, stepping on his nerves with impunity. Attempt number two: what is your name?

What is two plus two? What’s his name? What’s the point of these questions? What could they possibly be getting out of this - of course he knows…

Of course he knows his…

He doesn’t…

He freezes half-sitting up in bed, blinking up at the robotic arm as a sticky confusion bubbles up in his chest. 

He doesn’t know who he is. 

He can’t remember anything that isn’t here in this white room being watched by a strange robotic nanny. He knows things though. Things that imply that he wasn’t always here. He knows what kindergarten is. He knows that the voice isn’t a person. He can do basic math. 

Suddenly the simplicity of the test questions are his lifeline. There’s a hole in his memory- or, or his memory is all holes and no memories, but he existed…somewhere else...with a name and a life before he was in here. 

He just doesn't quite remember it right now.

Looking down at the strange semi-translucent jumpsuit he’s wearing (covered in an almost-comical number of electrodes fitted through holes in the material) doesn’t reveal any sort of name tag. Beyond whatever fashion statement this outfit is supposed to be making, he looks like he’s white, male, and maybe in his early thirties. With nothing else to go on, it looks like it’s time to gamble. “John.”

Incorrect. Attempt number three: what is your name?

Well. Now he knows he isn’t a gambler. Or shouldn’t be. 

There’s no telling what kind of critical thinking skills he normally has. Gambling didn’t work and the urge to play along is already fading so it’s time for plan B. He reaches down, pulling out his IV line. “Shit, that hurt- fuck off.”

Incorrect. The voice says, tone never changing, even as he feels the hair on the back of his neck stand up. The arm swoops for him on the bed, probably pushing some sort of sedative through the now-disconnected IV line, but he’s already rolling his floppy, barely dressed body right onto the floor. 

No means no, robot. 

His body isn’t working with him yet, but he wiggles and elbows and flops himself away from the arm until he can lean back against the wall, watching it hover uselessly just out of range.

“Ha!” He yells, more than a little victorious. Take that technology. No match for his big dumb monkey body. A trail of peeled off electrodes mark his escape route as he drops his head back against the wall, staring up at the ceiling. 

The giddiness of his highly daring escape fades, slowly dripping away a little more with each breath, falling into the silence of the room around him. Leaving him panting around the gap where the rest of him used to be.  

Why can’t he remember anything? Where is everyone? Who is he-

- - -

The cafeteria is a churning wall of noise as children swarm between the tables, squeezing in together at over-crowded tables in flagrant violation of the ‘eight kids to a table’ rule. 

Oh well, Frank’s not gonna narc.

He’s the cool teacher, he’s not throwing that cred away now to attempt order in the lawlessness that is lunch period B. He prefers to waste his time in much more interesting ways than that. Rifling through his lunch bag brings Frank down from his temporary high horse. The privileges of being an adult include eating lunch at a table without being crushed and the ability to pee without carrying around an ugly-looking hall pass. The cons include being the person that’s in charge of packing his own lunch.

Today it’s looking somewhat…pathetic.

The Frank that packs lunch is a different man from the one who eats it six hours later and his pre-caffinated self seems to have been particularly out of it this morning. Eight baby carrots, a peanut butter sandwich, and a handful of now crushed tortilla chips.

Eh. It’s not the worst he’s done.

Older Frank was probably just playing by the old standby: eat all the colors of the rainbow. Orange, beige, brown, and beige are pretty close. If gold and black are good enough for the Steelers, they’re good enough for his lunch.

Kids wander past his seat in steady streams from the serving line, hardly registering that there’s a teacher next to them as they buzz about the latest classroom drama. Frank leaves them to it, scrolling on his phone and ignoring the more reportable bits of gossip passing by him (he doesn’t have any interest in knowing what middle schoolers would build a shrine to in the gym bathroom, he’s sure it will just make him feel old). An email alert that doesn’t immediately look like spam pops up and Frank swipes it down to read it as he takes another bite of his lunch carrots.

The Thin Red Line

To: Astronomy Curiosities [email protected]

From: Irina Petrova [email protected]

Frank pauses at the alert, blinking at the header. He hasn’t seen one of these in who knows how long. He assumed that he’d unsubscribed from them a couple years back along with everything else. It’s an old scientific mailing group he joined years ago for experts in different fields to share odd things they’ve found in their work.

It’s strangely nostalgic to see one now of all times. Almost by instinct, Frank finds himself opening the full email. 

The introduction is a bit of a ramble as Irina Petrova, a Russian astronomer, details the research she’s been doing for the past two years into nebulae and specifically the infrared light that they give off. It’s a dry read, a full blast of academia at 11:15 am, but Frank doesn’t stop, eyes jumping forward. Then the email’s tone shifts as Irina explains what pushed her to submit this in the first place. Her IR findings weren’t just limited to nebulae or the wider galaxy.

There is a thin infrared line in our solar system, emitting light at 25.984 micron wavelength with absolutely no variation. 

Frank tilts his head, knee slowly starting to bounce under the table. That’s not…typical. There are causes for something like that, but it’s a short list and the whole situation is irregular to say the least.

The line is an arc that rises from the sun’s north pole for 37 million kilometers before angling downwards sharply towards Venus. By the point that the line reaches Venus, its cross-section is as wide as the planet itself.

Now that’s certainly not normal. Frank frowns, leaning into the phone like that will make what he’s reading make any more sense.

I have attached all of my data in an excel spreadsheet as well as a handful of 3D renders. There are many reasons to see IR light in interplanetary space, from space dust all the way up to refracting molecular compounds. It could even explain why it’s all coming in at the same wavelength. The specifics of the arc dimensions are curious though and I can’t see a reasonable cause, especially with the exclusion of Mercury. I wanted to share this data to see if anyone had theories about what it might be from or if someone was getting readings of this on their own-

“What are you looking at?” 

Frank jumps in his seat, suddenly jerked back into reality. Vivi, one of the new substitute teachers, watches him as she grabs a seat on the other side of the table, raising an eyebrow at him. 

Right. 

Frank is at work, in a middle school cafeteria, burning through a lunch break as he waits to teach kids about the lifecycle of frogs. Not suckering himself back into academia based on nothing but an old mailing list. 

Frank gives her an awkward smile as he drops his phone facedown on the table, forcing his eyes away from it. “Oh, uh, nothing, some scientific article thing.” 

That’s it. A couple weird readings on some scopes. Nothing more. Certainly nothing that needs him.

Vivi shrugs the non-answer off easily as she settles into her seat. It wasn’t a real question to begin with. “Did you see what Callie added to the bathroom shrine-”

- - -

Shit.

The memory clicks into place like it's always been there. That was him - out in the real world. It’s context for who he is. He scrubs a hand over his face. Okay, what did he learn?

He must be from Pittsburgh if the passion he felt for the Steelers is anything to go off of. He’s a middle school teacher - science teacher if the mailing list is anything to go off of. He can’t imagine many other subjects involve teaching kids about frogs.

And his name is Frank.

Huh.

Guess John wasn’t a bad guess.

It feels right as the name settles into place (again). He’s Frank, Frank is him. It gives him energy, a sense of grounding. He still doesn’t know why he’s here, or where here even is, but it’s something to hold onto. Frank is a person even if he doesn’t have all the memories to back it up. And people exist with other people. So it’s time to find them and get some answers. 

Levering himself up to his feet is easier now. The longer Frank stays awake, the more his body seems to remember how to act. Good. Remembering how to exist is always a good sign.

Frank slowly makes his way along the wall, legs growing steadier with each step. The robotic arm stretches towards him, opening and closing uselessly out of reach. Suck his bipedal power. Frank feels a wave of energy building at his success, making his way along the wall towards the other pods.

“Hey, wake up humans. Come on, up and at ‘em.” Frank calls out, listening for any sign of their own word troubles (listen he gets it). Frank starts laying out his plan mentally as he shimmies up the ladder for a better angle to wake them up. They'll work together to figure out what’s going on, and he can help them remember how catty middle schoolers are if that ends up being important for some reason (he’s working with limited information here), and they can all get out of this room-

Oh.

Frank blinks at the beds in front of him with a sudden stillness.

They’re both dead.

For a while by the looks of it.

The one closest to him was a man. He thinks. Short black hair with an identical semi-translucent bodysuit to Frank’s. The one in the other bed is a woman, box braids laid out neatly around her head. They’re both clean and tucked into bed peacefully, like they laid down and…just didn’t get back up. 

The only thing that breaks the illusion is the state their bodies are in. 

Whatever happened must have been a long time ago based on the sunken in, leathery texture of their skin, wrapped low and tight over their bones.

Frank shrinks back against the wall, hanging between the ladder and the beds, as he stares at the stranger’s bodies. He doesn’t remember who they are, not their names or their faces, but his chest aches at the sight. Frank knew them. Somewhere in his memories he knew who they were and they meant something to him. 

He knuckles his chest for a moment, eyes squeezed tight against emotions he can’t even identify. 

The questions bubbling up in his chest only seem to multiply as he lingers so Frank forces himself to turn away and look back up at the ladder. It’s long, stretching up at least twenty feet to a hatch in the ceiling. A fact that makes Frank’s stomach churn dangerously. 

He’s pretty sure he doesn’t like heights. 

Still it’s climbing a ladder or staying in this room and Frank really doesn’t want to do that so up he goes. It’s a shaky process with more than a few panting breaks as Frank runs through his body’s very finite energy, but finally, eventually, he reaches the top, opening the hatch with a soft hiss. Frank heaves himself over the edge into the next room, sprawling on the floor gracelessly.

Frank one, stupid robot arm zero.

A thin sheen of sweat builds between his skin and the rubbery material of the jumpsuit. That was- hard. Unfamiliar. Frank hasn’t moved around in a long time if the tightness in his lungs is anything to go by. He doesn’t like what that says about how long he’s been down there.

Frank pries himself up off the floor, looking around this new room carefully. There’s another ladder, and the walls are stuffed with bags that are strapped down. Everything is packaged up in as secure and narrow a format as possible. Streamlined. Frank would really like something, or preferably someone, to start telling him why. He keeps going, climbing farther and farther up, looking for a window or an exit door or something that explains a single thing about what’s happening. A growing sense of something wrong tickles the back of Frank’s mind but he can’t quite bring it into focus. This would be a very nice time to get the rest of his memories. 

Each room that he passes gets tucked away for later.

Ladder.

Bunch of bags. Not exciting.

Ladder.

Round screen room. Confusing…but ultimately not helpful right now. Frank doesn’t linger.

Ladder.

State of the art laboratory.

Wait.

Frank’s exploration is paused for a moment as he stumbles into his latest discovery. It’s a lab stuffed with dozens of scientific instruments filling every inch of wall space, and Frank doesn’t need his memory to know that every single one of them is out-the-ass levels of expensive. 

Who would put this over a coma room? Who would make a coma room in the first place? None of this equipment is medical. Spectrometers and microscopes and not a single defibrillator to be seen. More memories, this time implied, rise to the surface. He knows this equipment despite how prohibitively expensive it is. Names, purposes, little quirks of use - all of it comes to mind as easily as breathing. 

“Am-am I smart?” Frank asks, blinking at the room around him. He's a teacher, why- why would he know about this stuff?

The room remains as silent and unanswering as everywhere else he’s looked.

Frank forces himself to keep moving, shaking his head gently like he’s trying to physically dislodge the thought. The hypotheticals of why he knows something are almost as bad as the questions themselves. It's just more clutter bouncing around his head. Until he finds someone to answer him, he just has to focus on facts.

Like how the time on his feet seems to be helping. Frank can feel his limbs shake off their thick clubbiness and slowly come back to life. A little more agile, a little more maneuverable. It feels good to get control of himself - like he’s remembering how to be a person.

And then he reaches the next ladder.

It’s the first hatch since the room he woke up in and something about it feels final. This is the end of the hallways. Whatever he’s looking for has to be through there. Frank clambers up the ladder (he’s getting better at it) and jams his shoulder into the surface until it unlatches with another hiss. Frank lets out a heavy breath as he finally drags himself up into a…cockpit.

The room lights up as he lifts himself inside, computers coming to life as the system registers his presence. There’s an overwhelming number of buttons and lights and screens on every wall, all vying for his attention. Frank stumbles to his feet, scared to touch anything and too big to avoid it. “Hello? People? Where- where are the people?”

Current living inhabitants are: Frank Langdon. The voice intones suddenly, making Frank jolt.

He twists around, looking for a new robot arm to appear, but he’s still alone. “Where is everyone else?” 

Question unclear.

“Where are the other living people?” Frank repeats, throat tightening as his eyes skim off of the screens covered in data about…something. A dark window on the far side of the room catches Frank’s eye and he stumbles towards it, captured by the chance to look out and see-

Stars.

Speckling the sky in vivid numbers. There are…too many of them. Stars don’t look like that breaking through Earth’s atmosphere. The lights and pollution, they can’t make it through this clearly. These stars are shining, splattered across an inky darkness too complete to be anything other than space.

He’s not on Earth.

What the fuck.

“What the fuck.” Frank breathes, staring at the stars sprinkled through the consuming blackness. “No, no-” This isn’t happening, he’s not- Frank stumbles back towards the lone seat in the room. “Earth, go back to Earth.”

Pilot detected. The robot announces glibly as he sits down.

“Shut- shut up!” Frank snaps, tapping one of the screens awake with a shaking hand as he runs the other through his hair. It feels a little greasy (probably because he’s been unconscious for who knows how long in fucking space-). Frank lets go of his hair, resolving not to think about it anymore. His hair is not a priority. Who is he supposed to talk to when having a space emergency? He doesn’t remember training for any of this. “Call Houston!”

Contact unknown.

Frank is getting real sick and tired of his conversational partner if he’s being honest.

Finally a mapping tab appears on the screen he's been tapping on in a growing panic, centered on a little red dot labeled as the Hail Mary. A swooping trajectory line curls away from it off the screen. That’s this- the ship is the Hail Mary. Okay, so he just follows the line back home- Frank zooms out, backtracking along the trajectory towards Earth. The line stretches off screen no matter how far he scrolls, no Earth in sight. Where is he, like Neptune? Frank keeps going even as his stomach sinks, heart pounding dangerously. It shouldn’t take this long to find the sun…

Sol appears on the screen with a small Earth positioned next to it. There it is. Home. Even on this computerized scale, Frank can tell that it’s far. 

Too far.

A lump settles in his throat. “Travel time to Earth.” 

Current travel time to Earth is 11 years, 10 months, 14 days, and 6 hours.

“No.” Frank immediately refuses, shaking his head. “Nope, you're lying. That’s not- I’m not-”

Humanity doesn't have the technology to get people this far out in space. 

The amount of fuel that would require is astronomical, the weight alone of the hydrogen or kerosene or liquid methane would be a catch-22. The fuel it would take just to push the fuel would outweigh the thrust it could give the ship. It doesn’t make any sense. Not to mention that they certainly wouldn’t be able to make it all the way out here in a single generation. 

Frank’s mind is scattered, jumping from thought to thought as it pokes holes in every new fact he's given. Something about it feels familiar, like this is just how Frank's brain works. 

Still the conclusion he’s reaching over and over again is that this doesn’t make any sense.

The numbers don’t line up on anything of the data that the ship is giving him, and that’s before adding in the return trip that requires everything doubled-

Frank fumbles as he pulls up the Fuel panel.

Remaining: 20,892 KG

Consumption Rate: 6.045 G/S

Frank watches it for a second as the consumption rate flickers down to 6.043 grams per second. Firm numbers. Okay. He works his way back down the ship, the math flowing easier in his mind than his still evasive memories. The lab gives him a whiteboard and a mess of markers to work with. 

Consumption versus thrust.

As the fuel is consumed, the mass of the ship goes down and it needs to use less fuel to propel itself along at the same rate. Ignoring fuel type (which he still doesn’t know) and estimating approximately six grams per second to account for the fluctuating use, Frank runs the math out to its natural conclusion. 

He’ll be out of fuel in forty days.

Ice fills Frank’s lungs as he stares at his numbers, burning and freezing in the same gasping breath.

He can’t get anywhere in forty days. There’s nothing that close in space. Not another star, certainly not Earth. If the computer system is to be believed, it took him years to get out here in the first place. 

Which means only one thing.

The Hail Mary isn’t built to go back home. 

Frank slumps back against the wall as a rattling whine shudders out of his chest. He doesn’t understand what’s happening to him. He doesn’t know why he’s here or who sent him or what they sent him out here for. Frank doesn’t even know who he is. But Frank does know this:

He’s going to die out here. 

And he’s going to die alone.

- - -

Time gets loose after that.

Well. Frank assumes that time itself stays relatively stable. His sense of it certainly gets loose though. Somewhere around the discovery of the vodka stored in the dormitory, time stops being quite so…firm.

He passes drifting hours on crucial breakthroughs, like learning that vodka is a delicious and powerful elixir.

Who would have thought? Frank just discovered that.

And since he can’t specifically remember anyone else having had it before him, Frank’s going to claim that as an original. New discovery, his own taste-buds. What will he find next?

(The piles of personal belongings and presumably important bags he ripped through to find it aren’t important right now. What’s important is that he has his juice. Enough to make his brain shut up.)

- - -

Frank drifts through the ship. 

Sometimes he has a goal. Look at the lab. Cry in his bed. Avoid the cockpit. 

Other times it’s more of a wander as he feels out the edges of his environment, only occasionally impeded by waves of nausea caused by an unknown force (vodka). After a break or two to…remove the vodka from his body, suddenly, Frank continues with his exploration. 

It’s fine, it’s not like he’s in a rush. 

- - -

A mess of questions fill the lab whiteboards. Frank’s not sure if his memory problems are a one-time thing or…recurring so a record of everything is important. 

Curled up on the floor of the lab, Frank scrawls out every single thing he can remember about himself. Observations, pieces from his memory. Guesses are marked with question marks and words that are unclear because he was too drunk to write straight are rewritten later.

It’s a forgiving system like that.

The facts he does have fill the board he keeps in the center of the room.

His name is Frank and he has brown hair. He has a birthmark kind of shaped like Tennessee on his right hip. Frank’s pretty sure he enjoys tomatoes based on how much he liked the last food pouch (It was labeled spaghetti, but Frank’s not sure he’d agree. It was still mostly blended as the system works his stomach up to solid foods). 

On and on it goes, filling out fact after fact about who he is that still doesn’t seem to illuminate anything.

The other whiteboards around the lab are covered in questions, outnumbering the facts almost three to one. Why is he out here? (Why can’t he go home?) What is he supposed to be doing? (Why would they send him?) Why can’t he remember anything about himself? (who is he, who is he, who is he-)

The white space under them remains blank.

- - -

Frank wakes up. He wanders. He eats what the arm (Mary, Frank’s nicknamed her) gives him. He wanders some more.

There’s not much to see, but a strange sense of waiting has invaded his life. He doesn’t know anything about what he’s supposed to be doing. The vodka disappears and Frank moves on without it, still mapping out his space and looking for something that will answer his questions.

At least he knows the floor plan now.

The dormitory is the lowest crew-accessible point of the ship and farthest away from the cockpit. There’s not much more to it than Frank thought on first impression. The bed is fine, especially now that Mary disappeared the old electrodes and wires he woke up with. He tries not to look at the other two beds, throat tight as he climbs past them.

Sometimes it’s easier just to sleep in the lab.

The lab lingers somewhere in the middle of the ship, roughly across from the hallway to the airlock that Frank missed the first time. 

Frank finds himself gravitating back to the lab repeatedly as his eyes run over the different machines, something familiar about being surrounded by them. Frank keeps himself to the whiteboards - he’d prefer not to touch the who-knows-how-expensive equipment without at least a little more context.

And the cockpit is at the front of the ship, full of all sorts of despair-inducing data. 

The strangest addition to the ship, by far, is the screen room. Frank finds himself there almost as often as the lab, sprawling on his back for a distraction from the tangled ache of emotions behind his eyes.

The screen room, and Mary by extension, has access to…everything.

It looks like there are millions of videos in the catalog that can fill the wall of the room at a moment’s notice. Salty spraying oceans and rich green forests teaming with life. A chickadee, chirping brightly as it bounces between sunlit branches. Each video sends a fluttering of emotion through his chest.

Longing, grief. Delight.

Frank has a favorite though.

There’s a busy intersection that someone filmed out of a first story window that captures the overlapping way city life thrusts people into each other's spaces. The skipping-walk the kids use, dancing through the chaos. The biker on the far side of the street who bites it on a pothole, and then gets picked up by a stranger. The impatient taxi driver who cuts someone off and then blames them for it with a honk and a wave of the finger.

The first time Frank saw it, he practically ran out of the room as he yelled at Mary to turn it off. It had been physically painful, ripping through barely dressed wounds as the ship sunk back into its thick silence. 

Still, Frank found his way back over and over again to pick at the scab.

Listening to the little excuse-me’s bouncing off of people, the way that each stumble over a particularly uneven piece of pavement set off a wave of warnings to the next person, the creeping sun pressing through the buildings as it chases after pedestrians.

It’s perfect. It’s absolutely perfect.

Frank lets his eyes slip closed for a moment, trying to picture the sensations coating his own body. The ache of his feet pounding over pavement, the full strength of the sun beating down on his shoulders…

Frank frowns as something tickles the back of his mind. Why does that feel so familiar? He follows the thought, trying to find where it came from. The heat of the sun on him, a new heat records every year. No end in sight for the constant up, up, up-

- - -

It’s hard to quantify Frank’s relationship with Garcia.

They’re on a last name basis with one another (enforced) and she grimaces when he shares about his classes for too long, but they also have a standing date at Murphy’s every other week to catch up that’s required attendance, rain or shine.

Frank’s best guess is that it’s the unique kind of bond formed from sharing an apartment with someone through the worst parts of undergrad.

Seeing someone vomit in a potted planet fourteen minutes before they defend their thesis is an experience like no other. Hiding said vomit plant so that it can’t be found is soul bonding. Whatever it is, it keeps them in each other’s orbits and Frank appreciates having a reason to talk to someone who isn’t thirteen on a semi-regular basis. It’s the little things.

Frank weaves through the booths towards Garcia where she’s already settled at the bar with a small crowd of empty gin & tonics scattered in front of her. Less than what it takes to get her truly drunk (again, undergrad gives someone an eye for that kind of thing), but more than she normally has.

“Something wrong?” Frank asks with a raised eyebrow, dropping into the stool next to her. “Maya throw up on the couch again?”

That dog was the worst decision of Garcia’s life and the most successful sales pitch of Frank’s. Not that Garcia will ever admit he got her. So now she’s the proud owner of the world’s most queasy goldendoodle. Serves her right. Karma is a flat circle. Or maybe that’s time. Whatever, he’s right and she’s wrong.

“Rough day at work.” Garcia says, not rising to the bait as she swallows roughly and shoots him a loaded look he can’t quite make out.

Frank frowns. What’s that supposed to mean? “Rough day at your cushy government job in the D.O.E.?”

Frank says it as a joke, a little jab to wake her up, but she just nods.

“Yeah. How were your kids today? Still in love with the concept of volcanoes or whatever it is you do?” Garcia says, eyes slipping away to scan the room.

Well if he didn’t think she was lying before, he does now. Garcia doesn’t give a solitary shit about his classroom. And she's never been one to dodge the hard conversation. Clearly whatever's got her attention is…big. Frank leans forward until he can catch her attention properly again. “Yoyo, what’s going on?” 

She scrubs a hand over her face at the old college nickname (a nuclear option in terms of trying to get the truth). Whatever mental calculations she’s running seem to fall in his favor because Garcia drops her hands and rummages around for her phone after a moment. “Fuck it. The president’s making the announcement in an hour anyway.”

The room tilts sideways as she opens something on her phone, fully aware of the bomb she just dropped in his lap.

“The president?” Frank echoes weakly. “This- this is important, isn’t it.”

Garcia pauses for a moment, looking at him with heavy eyes. Frank doesn’t know if he wants to find out what is hidden there. “Yeah. It is.”

She slides her phone over to him, open to an internal Department of Energy report that has the words ‘Top Secret’ stamped boldly at the top. Frank chooses to follow her lead and ignore that part. 

It’s a report about the Petrova line. Frank almost wants to laugh at the coincidence. The strange IR line and the theories about what it is have been exciting scientific news for a couple thousand people globally. Astronomy is a small bubble. Frank has his own theory about solar radiation directing positively-charged particles in an IR band. It’s been a fun little brain teaser to think about between grading tests.

It doesn’t seem so funny showing up in confidential D.O.E. documents. The report is a dense collection of data seemingly collected from a probe near the sun measuring- light? Output?

“Yoyo, what is this? What am I looking at?” Frank asks as he scans the numbers.

“You know the Amaterasu, the Japanese probe out between Mercury and Venus?” Garcia asks, waiting for him to nod (he’s a middle school science teacher, of course he keeps an eye out for good space stories). “These are their numbers.”

So Frank really, really shouldn’t be seeing this. Good to know. “What am I looking at though? This is data from the sun and the light is, what-”

“Dimming.” Garcia completes for him. “It’s dimming.”

“The eleven year solar cycle…” Frank offers, frowning at the data that’s still saying the same thing.

“They accounted for that.” Garcia tells him quietly. “There’s still a trend. The sun is 0.01 percent less bright than it’s supposed to be.”

Frank almost wants to whine that stars don’t do that. He holds that urge in, barely. Garcia would tear him apart for it and his pride simply can't accept that kind of upper hand. Still, that doesn’t make any sense. Why would a star dim while still in the prime of its lifecycle without any reason? “So the sun is dimmer-”

“Dimming. Actively. Their numbers are saying that the dimming effect is increasing, exponentially.” Garcia says as she picks up one of her drinks again. She doesn’t sip it, just rolling it on the outside edge as the gin inside slips around.

Dimmer versus dimming. It’s such a small difference in language for such a massive shift. One is an adjustment, a change in a pattern. The other is a problem, active and worsening by the sound of it. A threat. Frank’s eyes drift to the top of the document even as he opens his mouth to ask. “Where is the energy going?”

Garcia lets the cup fall flat again. “The Petrova line. All of it. At the same rate that the Sun is dimming, the Petrova line is getting brighter.”

Frank blinks at the document on her phone, before dropping it back onto the bar to scrub a hand over his face. “There’s no way…that doesn’t make sense.”

Garcia huffs a quiet laugh, shaking her head at the words she’s almost certainly said herself. “Welcome to the last eighteen hours of my life. Whatever that line is made of is growing just as quickly as the sun is dimming.”

“Where does that put us?” Frank asks, leg bouncing under the bar as an itchy desire to walk away before he can hear her invades his skin.

“In nine years, the sun’s output will drop a full percent. Five percent in twenty years.”

Christ.

Those numbers are bad. Very, very bad. 

Crop failures and mass migrations and new ice age levels of bad. The end of humanity levels of bad. Frank vaguely remembers Garcia starting the conversation by telling him that the president is planning to announce this tonight. No wonder.

Frank’s body feels like it’s drifting away from him as he breathes a quiet ‘shit’ into the air, staring down at the sticky wooden bar. Whatever that line is, whatever it’s doing - it’s going to kill the sun. And Earth along with it.

“Yeah.” Garcia nods, flashing the bartender a small signal to get them both another round. “Shit.”

- - -

Holy shit.

Frank gasps as the memory crashes into place, curling up like that will keep him safe against the information slamming into his head. 

The sun is dying. 

Dimming technically, but those numbers didn’t show any sign of slowing down. The opposite really. It's just getting started and that only goes one way.

It certainly only goes one way for Earth. Humanity can’t handle a temperature swing like that, not without consequences. Massive consequences. Frank’s stomach clenches at the memory of Garcia’s eyes, the fear churning with disbelieving confusion. Like even she couldn’t believe what she was saying. Frank appreciates the confirmation that he isn’t crazy for struggling to wrap his mind around it.

And it’s all being caused by one thing: the Petrova line. 

An unknown threat from space hanging a proverbial sword of Damocles over life on Earth. It turns out that the concept is a lot more fun in movies. Frank scrubs a hand over his face, trying to tug any more answers out of his head. Why not send him to the sun? Or Venus? Why send a ship to another solar system? 

Even the answers seem to come with more questions. 

What the hell is the Petrova line made of? This isn’t the behavior of some magnetically-charged space dust. The word exponential and inanimate are rarely connected and certainly not on a scale like this.

Something seems to have slipped loose at the return of the latest memory. Frank has been wracking his mind for days trying to draw something out of the depths, but the soft-push of the latest question jolts his patchy memories to life. 

Frank only has half a second to let out a quiet ‘oh’ before he falls into the next one. 

- - -

Humanity is able to adjust to all sorts of things. 

The end of the Twinkie. The immediate return of the Twinkie. The existence of Florida. There is a human ability to keep moving no matter what. The imminent end of life as they know it was a massive shock. And then the world kept turning and people kept needing toilet paper and blueberries.

So everyone looked at each other and just…kept going.

Frank swings around the edge of his desk, clapping his hands together loudly to recapture everyone’s attention. “We’ve got three minutes until the bell. It’s time for a lightning round, high energy, let's go!” 

Thirty little faces look up at him eagerly from their desks, right at home surrounded by the maximalist crush of all of the science posters and solar system models that Frank could possibly get his hands on.  He’s got specific taste, sue him. Frank tries to keep his words as exciting as the decor and what’s more exciting than rapid fire quizzing to end the period. Frank scoops up a handful of beanbags, weighing them out in his hand as he turns to face his little proteges. “Who can tell me the name of the North Star?”

“Polaris!” James blurts out before his hand is even done shooting into the air. Frank could have guessed who was going to pipe up first.

“Correct.” Frank says as he tosses him a beanbag, already turning to look at the room again. “What’s the nearest star to Earth?” 

“Alpha Centari!” James answers immediately, leaning forward in his seat.

“Wrong, but close.” Frank says, softening the blow slightly.

James still frowns at him seriously. “I’m not!” 

“Yes, you are.” Frank shrugs, moving past his desk before they both get trapped there. “Anyone else?”

“Oh!” Crus’s hand pops up from the middle row. “The Sun.”

“That’s right, beanbag for Crus.” Frank says as he underhands the bag with a smile. “Careful with your assumptions, James.”

James huffs, twisted in his seat to watch Frank as he wanders down the alley between the desks.

“What is another name for the 380 to 750 nanometer wavelengths of light-?”

“That’s visible light!” Joy pipes up from the desk across from James.

Frank grins, launching a bean bag at her. “Correct.”

“In terahertz, the range is 400 to 790.” James tells everyone know-it-all-ingly.

Joy shoots him a harsh look for daring to speak and Frank decides to ignore both of them. He doesn’t miss being in middle school. It’s a cutthroat little world out here. Frank runs through his mental list of scientific pop facts. “Who can tell me the radius of Earth?”

“Three thousand, nine-” James starts reciting immediately, eyes locked on Joy.

“James.” Joy interjects, staring back at him just as hard. “The answer is James.”

“What?” Frank blinks, looking between two of his favorite headaches in confusion.

“You asked who could tell you the radius of Earth. James can.”

Damn, these two are fun in a way that causes parent-teacher conferences. Still a right answer is a right answer. Frank drops a beanbag on her desk as the bell rings. 

All of the kids start packing up, crumpling papers into their bags and scooping up their beanbags proudly. They trickle out in a steady stream of waves and hollered goodbyes.

“Make sure to bring those back on Friday for the prize bag.” Frank calls after them as they file out. The hallways rumble outside as kids slam lockers and chatter on their way out to the buses and pick-up lines. Frank settles in as his room empties, scooping up the large stack of ungraded assignments still sitting on his desk and a blue pen (red feels a little too aggressive). 

The noise outside slowly fades as he gets into the zone at his desk, time drifting by in a haze of misspelled elements (thank god Frank isn’t an English teacher). Frank’s lower back gives a persistent ache as he works his way through the stack, a side effect of his own bad posture. Ah, the joys of grading.

“Dr. Langdon?”

Frank blinks at being called a doctor (his kids usually just call him by his last name), quickly followed by the recognition that the speaker’s voice is far too deep to belong to a thirteen year old. He lifts his head to find a tall middle-aged man standing in the doorway who (no offense) looks like his kids would be Frank’s age. “Yes, are you a parent?”

“No.” The man says, stepping into the classroom with a simple authority. “My name is Michael Robinavitch. I’m part of the Petrova Taskforce.”

Frank blinks at that non-explaination-giving answer, not quite sure how to respond. 

He stops a few feet from Frank’s desk and holds up a bound stack of papers in his hand. “An Analysis of Water-Based Assumptions and Recalibration of Expectations for Evolutionary Models. This is you, right?”

“Uhh,” Frank says, straightening up in his seat as he fights the urge to try to grab it out of his hands. “Listen Micheal, I don’t know where you found that-”

“Call me Robby.” The man interrupts, thumbing through Frank’s article like he didn’t hear anything else Frank said. “Page thirty-one, ‘The Goldilocks Zone is for Idiots’ was a particularly exciting section.”

Exciting. That’s one word for Frank’s fall from academic grace. 

“Listen. I’ve gotten all the feedback I need on that actually.” Frank says with a flat laugh, fighting an old grudge as he stands up and starts shuffling the ungraded assignments into his backpack. Frank chose to speak his mind in that article about the globally-accepted models of evolution. And he chose to share it passionately. In an…occasionally less than professional manner.

Then it cost him his research funding and university position.

His mom always said he had a big mouth.

“You called the preeminent scientists in your field idiots for believing that water is essential for life.” Robby says with a raised eyebrow.

Calling out his peers by name? That might have been one of those aforementioned less than polite moments. “I...did do that, yes, but-”

“You have a doctorate in molecular biology, but you called your peers ridiculous for believing in the necessity of liquid water.” Robby says, speaking over him. Again. “What makes you think that the entire scientific field is wrong-”

“Because they are.” Frank finally bursts, old academic temper flaring sharply. “There’s nothing special about water. There isn’t. It’s hydrogen and it’s oxygen. It’s a requirement for life on Earth, but that’s not a rule. All that’s really needed for life is a chemical reaction that results in copies of the original catalyst. Anything that causes that is enough and a different planet might have entirely different rules.” 

The classroom falls quiet as Frank cuts himself off, swallowing down the rest of the speech just waiting to come out. Welp, good to know he hasn’t forgotten what it’s like to get heated at an academic conference. None of this really matters though because anyone who had thoughts on that article would have already given it to him in the last four years. “Why are you here? It can’t be to talk about an old research article.”

Robby takes his reaction in stride just like everything else, nodding along with his question. “What do you think of the ArcLight probe?”

Ah.

After the announcements of how colossally fucked things were looking a few months back, a specially built probe had been launched to fly through the Petrova line and capture a sample of whatever it’s made of. The fly-through had been successful and the early imaging sent back ahead of it had been global news for weeks.

Black dots, only a few microns wide, seem to make up the entire Petrova line. And they move.

The discovery had set the public’s imagination on fire and the fervor had created thousands of theories about what they could be. One of them is particularly popular though. And it’s the only reason someone would ask him about his old evolutionary model article before bringing up the probe.

“Are you asking if I think the dots are alien lifeforms?”

Robby doesn’t respond, tilting his head leadingly like he’ll wait Frank out until he answers.

Frank’s tempted to play the silent game just to prove he can, but he swallows the urge. It’s something that he wishes he could blame on working with middle schoolers all day, but it’s not. “It could be dust. Reflecting and bouncing off of magnetic fields.” 

The ‘could’ hangs between them, an evasion of the real answer they’re both thinking of.

“ArcLight probe splashed down this morning. I want you to tell me what they are and how they work.” Robby tells him simply. 

“Wha-what?” Frank laughs in disbelief. “There are hundreds of other scientists who have to be in line before me-”

“It spends its time on the surface of the sun. Does it sound like a water-based lifeform to you?”

No. It doesn’t.

The surface of the sun is over five thousand degrees Celsius. Water can’t exist at those temperatures. Anything past three thousand degrees, the hydrogen and oxygen bonds die. No theory of life founded on liquid water can account for something living in an environment like that.

“Speculative extraterrestrial biology is a very small specialty within the already tight field of molecular biology.” Robby says with a hint of something more human in his eyes at the headache that discovery must have been. “And everyone I’ve talked to pointed to you as my best choice.”

Frank blinks incredulously, not quite able to believe it. “Really? I mean, I didn’t leave on great terms…”

Robby shrugs, a smile playing on his lips as he recalls whatever they said to him about Frank. He’s sure it was less than flattering. “They understand the gravity of the situation. Besides, don’t you want to prove them wrong?”

Yes. No. “Not like this.”

“Strange times.” Robby nods as something conclusive slips into his tone, like the conversation is over. Four men in black suits (with a not insignificant amount of muscle) step into the classroom on some unknown cue from Robby, silent with flat expressions. “Now I’m going to need you to come with me.”

Frank doesn’t get the impression it’s a question.

- - -

The hazmat suit is uncomfortable to say the least. 

It’s required though if Frank doesn’t want to suffocate in this lab filled with- He’s not going to think about what the lab air is filled with actually. For his own peace of mind. A little gift to himself. 

Frank glances at the wall to his left where Robby and a collection of half a dozen well-dressed strangers watch him through a small viewing window. “Can I lodge another objection about all of this?”

“Objection noted.” Robby tells him dryly.

Dick. 

Frank keeps that last note to himself as he turns back to the sample container. He’s not sure how many microphones and cameras are in this room, but from Robby’s easy ability to hear him he’d bet it’s in the low dozens. 

Still, despite standing in the lab equivalent of a surveillance state and having been brought here…persuasively, Frank can’t stop the swell of excitement in his chest at the lab equipment surrounding him. It’s like being in a version of Disneyland that represents exactly how bad he was at talking to girls in high school. Anything he could ever need is in here, just waiting to be used.

Frank stares at the sample cylinder in the center of the room with a nervous eye. “And we’re feeling confident that all of these protections are enough.”

“Yes. Nothing should be able to escape that room.”

“Right. I do seem to be in this room though.” Frank says, spinning on his heel to look at Robby pointedly. All he gets is a shrug for his troubles. “The internal atmosphere of the sampler-”

“Is pure argon. The same as the room you’re standing in.” Robby reports smoothly. “The dots inside have continued to report movement so clearly it doesn’t affect them. As I said before, just make sure not to break your oxygen line.”

Oh good, confirmation of exactly how deadly the room Frank is standing in is. Time to do everything he can to ignore that fact as he gets to work. 

Frank tries to put on his most scientific mindset as he clicks the sampler open, pulling out a ball containing the dots. Hush now intrusive thoughts, it’s time for science. Frank swabs the sample and swipes it over a slide, carrying it over to the microscope with heavy hands.

Deep breath in, here goes noth- there they are.

Frank blinks at the microscope lens in surprise. They’re not hiding or obscured or anything. The slide is covered in the little black dots, all wriggling around like they were in the original ArcLight probe footage months ago. “There they are.” Frank breathes, staring at them in wonder. “Are you recording this?

“From thirty-six different cameras.” Robby dead-pans. Tough crowd.

“The sample contains dozens of round objects, similar in appearance to those from the Petrova line images. Each appears to be approximately ten microns in diameter and they're…” Frank’s narration, something between a self-record of research and his classroom voice, trails off as he clicks through settings on the microscope. “Huh.”

“What?” Robby asks immediately. 

“They’re opaque. No matter what light settings I use, I can’t see into them whatsoever.” Frank says, sitting back in his seat to look at Robby.

“Are they alive?”

“That’s not something I can just look at it and know.”

“Biologists figured out bacteria. Do that.” Robby commands. “I want to know what they are and how they work.”

Frank snorts at that particularly useless fact. Robby can’t out-fun-fact a middle school science teacher. “That was centuries of work. By thousands of biologists.”

Robby’s face creases something that looks a lot like annoyance. “Do it faster than that.”

Frank’s pretty sure that’s as close as he’s going to get to an apology so he turns back to his slide. “I’ll see what I can do.”

They fall into silence after that as Frank works away at his tests, checking the dots over and over for any way to see inside the little assholes.

Robby stays in the window tapping away at his tablet with the squinting focus of a man who had to learn what it was after he was well over the legal drinking age. Important-looking figures filter in and out of the room around him, speaking to him in quiet conversations that are never projected into the lab. Robby's good at segmenting his work, Frank will give him that. Still Robby sticks around regardless of what anyone seems to be saying to him, just waiting for Frank to give him some news.

He appreciates the company. Sort of. Frank would appreciate a way to take a piss without needing to leave the entire lab, but this is good too. He gets comfortable as time slips away, settling in with his typical (terrible) posture as he hovers over the dots. His back isn’t going to appreciate that later.

Finally something clicks (and it’s not just one of his vertebrae).

“I think I understand what they’re doing on the sun.” Frank says as he straightens up for a moment before the knot in his back makes itself known again. 

He immediately has Robby’s attention. “They? Do you think they’re a lifeform?”

“Yeah, I do.” Frank nods, rolling his neck around slightly to loosen back up. “We know they move around, but it doesn’t take being alive to move - magnetic fields and gravity move inert objects all the time. So it’s a matter of proving that the movement is purposeful. I put a few of the dots in the spectrograph under a vacuum and they emit infrared light at the 25.984 micron wavelength.”

Robby stares at him with a blank look that isn’t dissimilar to one of Frank’s kids when he gets a little too far into a topic and loses them.

“That’s the Petrova line frequency.” Frank clarifies as he stares at his little alien buddies in disbelief. “The dots emit that wavelength every time they move.”

“I don’t follow.” Robby says, leaned forward in his seat.

“Light has momentum. It exerts a force when it's released. And our tiny friends here emit a huge amount of it for their size. A tiny amount of thrust working on a microscopic mass is a very effective propulsion system.”

Frank knows that he has Robby’s undivided attention now. “Is that something that can happen naturally? Space dust, magnetic lines-”

“No.” Frank shakes his head, knowing exactly what Robby is looking for. Yes, no. Alive or inanimate. “It consumes energy, stores it, and uses it for propulsion. That’s not a simple physical process and definitely not at the scale they’re doing it. It’s complicated, irregular. That’s something that would have had to evolve.”

“So they’re alive.” Robby repeats, chewing through the confirmation. “Why do they go to the sun? Or Venus? What do they want?”

“They don’t want anything. They’re most likely single-celled stimuli/response organisms. We’re not talking about little green men and spaceships here, this is…” Frank shakes his head looking for the word. “Space algae.”

“Space algae.” Robby repeats, digesting the news for a moment. Earth’s greatest threat is coming from tiny space dots that don’t even know they exist. That’s a humbling way to end life as they know it. “Anything else for me?”

“Yeah. The ambient temperature of the dots is 96.415 degrees Celsius.” Frank says, explaining one of the more baffling pieces of his science mystery.

“What does that mean?”

“Still undetermined.” Frank shrugs, as he gestures at his experiment set-ups. “But I can’t get it any hotter or colder than that. I put it in ice water, it doesn’t cool. I put it in one of the lab furnaces, it doesn’t heat. Whatever its internal system is for propulsion and energy storage, that’s how it regulates its internal temperature too.”

“Okay, what does that tell us?”

“That its internal propulsion and energy storage system is the source of its heating too?” Frank repeats. “I just told you.”

“How does that help me?” Robby clarifies, raising an eyebrow at Frank like he’s trying to keep a child on track with a simple task.

“Now we know that.” Frank shrugs. Understanding an alien organism isn’t a simple game of only finding the ‘right’ answers. Everything has to be explored or pieces of the puzzle won't be there to put together later.

“What about its internal structure? What’s it made of?” Robby asks him in the same tone he’s had for the last seven hours, well aware that Frank doesn’t have the answer to that yet.

Frank winces at Robby’s jab. 

The dots have continued to be particularly…evasive to all of his attempts at peeking inside. No matter what light he tries (infrared, ultraviolet, microwaves, x-ray, fucking gamma) nothing gets through it. It doesn’t make sense. 

Staring at the microscope where a number of his original dots are still sitting on the slide, Frank tilts his head in thought. Maybe he’s overthinking things.

It’s short work for Frank to find a nanosyringe in the incredibly organized lab layout. It’s exactly what it sounds like: a very expensive tool designed to be able to poke a microorganism. There are more scientific ways of saying that, but that’s what it does. 

A highly scientific poke.

Frank settles into his seat, leaning into the lens to get a clear view. He lines up the needle with one of the dots, pokes it-

And the dot dies.

Well, first it turns translucent in a sudden burst, revealing its cellular make-up and all of its previously hidden organelles. No more impenetrable black cell walls. Then it dies, cell walls collapsing as it unravels into a puddle of scientifically valuable goop.

“I killed one!” Frank cheers, sucking up the goop into his syringe. 

“Congratulations. You’re a movie star.” Robby snorts, still moving around his tablet.

Frank sets the goop into a test tube in the spectrograph, firing up the analysis on the little sample. “We’re about to see what these dots are made of.”

“How?” Robby asks, attention shifting back to Frank immediately. Weird how he only seems to care what Frank is saying when it’s ‘on task’ and ‘related to the questions he was given hours ago’.

“When I pierced it with a nanosyringe, the cell became translucent-”

Robby jumps right over confirmation of it being a cell to harp on a separate, arguably less important point: “You poked it with a stick?”

“A very scientific stick, if you think about it.” Frank hedges, even as he agrees with the base concept. A stick is a stick even if Frank’s scientific pride won’t let him accept Robby’s tone. “Now we wait for the spectrograph to stop exciting the sample and it will tell us the elements present inside the dots-”

Beep.

That was fast. Huh, guess top of the line equipment really is as good as they say. 

Frank scans the readout screen as it lists out the elements inside the dot one by one as percentages. “There’s carbon, nitrogen, hydrogen…and…oxygen.” 

“What does that mean?”

“The hydrogen and oxygen are at a two to one proportion.” Frank says, slumping back onto his stool as he stares at the machine. “The dots are made up almost entirely of water.”

“It lives on the sun.” Robby says incredulously, frown creeping into his voice.

“And regulates its temperature to 96.415 degrees Celsius regardless of what’s done to it.” Frank says, raising his hands to run them through his hair before the stuffy hazmat suit stops his movement. A once in a generation scientific opportunity from the stars, just to disprove one thing. Frank’s head drops, still wrapped in disbelief. “Every paper I ever wrote was wrong.”

- - -

The memories click into place one after the other. 

Frank finally remembers his class, his kids piling into their desks every day. The pride he felt every time one of them got that glow in their eyes and something just clicked. Meeting Robby.

Experimenting on the dots.

Earth is dying. Not from pollution or a rogue asteroid or little green men with a vendetta, but an alien lifeform so simple it hasn’t even evolved past asexual reproduction. There’s something cold about that fact, like the complete obliviousness of the dots to their impact underlines just how animal this is. It isn’t about fighting harder or being more clever than a threat. It’s a fight to prevent humanity from being wiped out in the swipe of a falling domino.

Frank looks around the room with fresh eyes.

It's state of the art in every way, and littered with empty food pouches and dismantled storage bags. It shakes something loose in the wall Frank’s been trying to force between himself and the reality he woke up in. He ran out of vodka at some point days ago, but it feels like he only just sobered up.

He was sent out here with a mission. Maybe the most important mission in the history of humanity.

And he’s not the only one people back home are counting on.

Making his way back down the ship is a familiar motion at this point, clambering down ladder after ladder until his feet hit the padded floor of the dormitory. It’s been hard to come down here. Not just because he thinks he might have formed a slight grudge against Mary’s arm. 

The knowledge of the two quiet strangers laying in their bed pods has been a weight hanging in the air, a quiet fact waiting to be acknowledged.

The floor is a mess with bag after bag of supplies tossed around, some open and others simply dragged out of the way to get to another one. Frank hadn’t been looking at anything when he was down here before, hunting through the ship like a bat out of hell for something to turn his brain off. Now though, it’s like the lights have finally come on and he’s ready to look at it for real. Ready to look at them.

Looking over the mess, Frank can make out name tags and little badges on the supplies, little signs of personalization to mark the things that belong to the crew. He wanders closer, picking up one of the golden yellow jumpsuits and cradling the fabric in his hands. 

It’s not one of his, too short and a little too broad. There’s already a name embroidered over the breast pocket, set on top of French and Algerian flags. Ellis.

Parker Ellis, their engineer, his mind completes for him.

Frank blinks at the memory of her name as vague impressions swirl around his mind. He remembers her, sort of. Ellis was funny. Sarcastic in a biting way that always felt like it was up to the other person to decide if they were in on it or not. She wasn’t mean though, not without a cause. She always seemed to find that line with people, pushing and pulling as easily as breathing. 

A small bag falls out from her suit, unnoticed in his initial frantic rifling. Frank unzips it gently and fights back tears. It’s full of little keychain trinkets and photos of people pressed together around her with big grins and that comfortable exasperated kind of love. 

They’re little signs of life, her life.

Frank drags himself away from them to look at the other set of jumpsuits.

Shen for John Shen, Frank’s mind completes easily, their commander and pilot. Chinese and Canadian flags rest under his embroidered name. 

A similar pouch is tucked into his things, filled with photos of John living his life back on Earth as he stands at the peaks of what look like half a dozen sun-baked hiking trails, surrounded by friends. Frank stares at the side of John’s pod as the same flickering memories twist through his chest. Shen had been calm. Aware of the chaos around him, but never shaken by it. Floating above whatever was dragging everyone else down. That levelheadedness, the way he handled whatever came next was like a pillar for everyone else to steady themselves with.  

Something small and childish in Frank almost wants to ask him to wake up and do it again.

Frank lets his gaze run over the photos and beloved little keepsakes scattered around him as his eyes burn with tears. Look at them, the lives that they lived. The people they touched. People they loved so powerfully that they brought keepsakes of them across the stars.

His eyes drift over to his own jumpsuits for a moment, but he already knows there’s nothing waiting for him there. 

Frank doesn’t have a memory bag. 

No pictures of friends or little touchstones to remind him of home. There had been a single note in his suits that Frank found when he was first digging through the bags. It had just been two words, written on a note laying on top of his suits. 

Good luck. 

Who knew how much he’d need it.

Frank scoops up jumpsuits and nick-knacks and anything else he can think of. They might not be on Earth anymore, but his crew-mates still deserve to be laid to rest properly. Frank intends that to them.

- - -

“Hi Mr. Langdon!” Nazely choruses from her desk. “The substitute teacher didn’t understand how beanbags worked at all so I’m glad you’re back.”

“Aww, that means a lot. I’m gonna tuck that away in my ego for later.” Frank tells her with a smile. The class is still getting settled as kids find their seats and pull out their binders so Frank takes a minute to wipe down the board from last period. The eraser squeaks, gunked up with years of marker debris that admin refuses to replace. Home sweet home and all that.

“I have a question.” Crus asks suddenly, voice clear over the quiet murmur of conversation.

Frank turns around, pointing at him with the eraser. “Shoot.”

“What’s happening to the sun?” Crus asks, fingers twisting around his pencil nervously. The shuffling and side conversations die down almost immediately with that. 

Frank swallows uncomfortably as his skin prickles. The question sets off a strange disconnect in his mind, blending his classroom and the almost-indescribable last twenty-eight hours of his life together. Questions about the Petrova line and the little dots eating their sun feel far more suited to coming out of Robby’s mouth than any of Frank’s students. 

“My dad says it’s a hoax.” James cuts in, turning to look at Crus.

“Well, my dad says your dad couldn’t mind his own business if he was the last man on earth.” Crus shoots back, expression falling shut as he turns to meet James’s look head on.

“Okay!” Frank cuts in quickly (before James’s dad comes down from the English department and makes that admittedly hilarious joke Frank’s problem). “Um, right now, there’s stuff growing on the sun kind of like algae-”

“The Astrophage?” Joy chimes in.

“The what? Where did you hear that?” Frank blinks, turning to look at her.

“My mom let me watch the big speech about it last night.” Joy shrugs like it’s no big deal. “That’s what the president called the dots.”

Jesus.

Frank hadn’t checked the news when he got home late last night. He wasn’t sure he could take any more reality checks. Falling into bed fully dressed and only pulling himself up again at the sound of his alarm had been all he could handle. It’s strange to realize that the world kept turning while he disappeared. 

Still, they named the Petrova line dots. Astrophage. Star Eater, if Frank still has his Latin and Greek roots correct. That’s a bleak title, albeit a pretty accurate one.

“Huh. Yes, Astrophage are the little black dots that are growing on the sun. They absorb some of the sun’s energy before it reaches Earth. A little portion of it.” Frank says, trying to find the right way to put it. “The problem is that when Earth gets less sunlight it gets colder and that has…ripple effects.”

“So it will be a little colder?” Joy asks with a frown. “Why does that matter?”

Frank nods, backtracking slightly. “Remember how we talked about climate change and the planet heating up by one and a half degrees because of our CO2 emissions?”

“My dad says that’s not real.” James chimes in.

“It is.” Frank says, cutting off that train of thought immediately. He’s definitely going to have James’s dad in his office later for that. “We saw how big of an impact that change had on the planet, right? If Astrophage keeps going, Earth’s temperature could drop a lot. Between ten and fifteen degrees.”

Crus frowns, pencil still tucked tight in his grip. “Pittburgh already gets cold in the winter though and my sister says the only people who have problems with it are from out of town.”

“It does. You’re not wrong.” Frank nods encouragingly, somewhere between his teacher voice and his how-do-I-explain-this-to-kids adult voice. “When things get cold unexpectedly, lots of species - plants and animals - can’t get the nutrients they need and they die out. And that impacts the animals that are supposed to eat them because then they can’t find food. So it goes up and up through the ecosystem.”

“Wait, animals are going to get hurt?” Emma asks in horror, hand covering the horse decorating her homework folder protectively. 

Human pain is hard to quantify, and climate shifts even more so. Winter is cold, the cold isn’t so bad. People get hurt, but they can just go to the hospital. Animal suffering tends to break through differently. 

“Yes, they will.” Frank says, swallowing as he nods along with her question. “A lot of animals are gonna go extinct. And oceans will freeze, and crops are going to-” They’re kids. Frank cuts himself off. The spiraling consequences of a trophic collapse rattles through Frank’s head, cleanly trapped behind his teeth.

“How long until…” James asks quietly, hands twisted up in his hoodie.

Frank swallows as he stares back at the little faces turned up to him in worry. Thirty wide-eyed bright little students, staring up at him for the answers. They come to him with all of their questions and fears because their parents didn’t (or can’t) explain what’s happening. And he can’t fix it for them. “The estimate is that it will happen within the next thirty years.” 

And all the kids relax again.

“Oh!” Emma laughs. “That’s in like forever.”

“You made it sound sooner.” James says, leaning back into his seat with a frown like Frank had been tricking them in some way.

“It’s not that far…” Frank starts, but the class has moved on, back to life as usual now that their questions have been answered. What thirteen year old could understand how close thirty years really is?

“Mr. Langdon, are you gonna go over the worksheet the substitute assigned?” Joy asks as Nazely doodles on the edge of her homework. 

Frank stares at them with a growing pit in his stomach, unable to make himself move an inch. Thirty years. In thirty years, his kids will be in their forties. They’re going to be the ones to experience the full shift as the world around them falls into something downright apocalyptic. Frank’s kids will be the generation to experience the sixth major extinction event.

Some of them might not even make it. 

“I…I have to go.” Frank says, shaking his head as he tries to pull himself back down to his body.

“What?” Crus asks, the only one to hear him in the rising chatter of the room.

“Do-do study hall, this is a study hall now.” Frank says, digging around his desk blindly until he finds his keys, heading for the door. “Just stay here until the bell.” He’s out of the classroom and down the hall before anyone can ask him anything else. 

Time seems to pass in skips and jumps as Frank throws himself into his car and peels out of the staff parking lot. Everything feels too close and too far away all at the same time. Frank just keeps moving. He knows he’s being reckless. Cutting people off. Running lights. He usually doesn't, not like this. He can’t find it in himself to care.

Frank pulls into the facility he walked out of just twelve hours ago and marches back inside (past a small crowd of particularly confused guards) until he finds himself back at the lab, almost slamming into Robby in his haste.

His arrival seems to genuinely throw Robby off his rhythm as he looks up at him in surprise. “What are you doing here?” 

Frank looks past him at the lab where people in hazmat suits are moving everything. “What are you doing?”

“Exactly what you wanted. Packing it up. Sending it off to other scientists and labs for further testing.” Robby says, falling back into his unflappable persona as he straightens up. “You’ve done your part. Now that we know it’s not anhydrous life, it’s going to the other experts.”

“Leave some Astrophage for me to work on here.” Frank says, pressing down sharply on the urge to direct some of his energy outwards by bouncing on his heels.

“No.”

“Why not?”

“Your notes tell us that there are three hundred and seventy four Astrophage in the full sample. Three hundred seventy-three after you killed one.” Robby tells him with a sharp eye. “Each of the labs getting part of the sample will get just a few cells. Less than ten. That’s it. Astrophage is Earth’s most precious resource.”

Frank’s chest rises and falls irregularly, electricity buzzing under his skin. That’s not good enough.

Robby seems to notice the tension burning through his skin and softens his tone slightly. “I know this is difficult. You wanted to prove that life could exist without water and when this chance came around, it didn’t work out in your favor. That’s hard. But you need to shake it off. We’ve got it from here.”

Frank forces his breath out in a steady breath, trying to remember any breathing mediation ever. None of them are coming to mind. “I’m still a molecular biologist who's spent his whole career working up models for alien life-”

“Dr. Langdon. I’m not leaving samples here for your ego-” Robby starts, eyes sharp.

“Fuck ego, this is about my kids.” Frank snaps, stepping into Robby’s space as he holds his eye. He's not getting kicked out of the action. Not when it matters this much.

“You don’t have any children.” Robby says coldly, pressing right where he’s softest.

Frank thinks of Abby, the apartment they shared for two years. The little ultrasound that was, and then wasn’t. He still has kids though. Ones that need him. “Yes I do. Dozens of them, who come into my classroom every day for the answers to all of their questions. And they’re going to end up in a living nightmare if we don’t find a solution to this.” Frank says, words growing short and heated as he speaks. “I don’t care about some old research papers - I care about my kids, so give me some goddamn Astrophage!”

Robby stares at him for a long minute, quiet and evaluating as he watches Frank come down from his temper. 

Frank doesn’t regret it, holding his gaze without an ounce of regret. He said it. He meant it. Let him do this.

Robby’s eyes are storming, sharp, but when he finally speaks it’s controlled. 

“You can have three.”

- - -

Frank can feel the sweat building between his skin and the jumpsuit as he fixes the ropes lining the top of the dormitory hatch.

Rigging something together that will allow him to pull his crewmates out of the dorm is a...creative operation. The design he settled on resembles the web of a particularly drunk spider over a sturdy pulley system. Still it’s functional and that’s what matters most.

Shen and Ellis deserve to be laid to rest properly and Frank intends to make that happen. 

It’s ladder after ladder to traverse the ship and Frank takes each one slow and steady. Lift Shen, drink some water. Lift Ellis, rig the next ladder. Lift Shen, have a meal pouch. Lift Ellis, sprawl right there on the floor and pant until he can catch his breath. The slightly cool air of the ship is a gift as the A/C keeps everything from falling stagnant as Frank moves. Thank god for modern technology. 

Slowly Frank carries them both to the airlock and gets to work redressing them in their flightsuits. 

It’s an effort that no one else will be able to appreciate, but it just feels right. They were a crew, his crew. They deserve to be laid to rest in their very best.

It’s only when Frank is laying them back down in the airlock, dressed for a mission they’ll never complete, that it all becomes real again. 

Frank swallows, staring down at two people who look far too small for the scope of life they must have led to be here at this moment. His crewmates. Two people who must have meant the world to him, so to speak. He wants to thank them for being out here with him, and apologize for what it cost them, and give some acknowledgement of who they were. 

He just can’t remember who that was.

Frank lingers in the doorway for a long slow moment before he finally clears his throat and steps forward quietly. He thumbs the pictures from Shen’s memory pouch as he steps forward, standing over him in the airlock. “Shen, you had a Dunkin iced coffee in your hand in every picture you brought. Literally every single one. I counted. You might have had a problem, but I can’t help being a little impressed by the commitment.” Frank says as he gently tucks the photos of Shen’s friends and family into the curve of his arms, right against his heart.

Then he turns to his left.

“And Ellis,” Frank says, feeling his eyes burn as he collects her photos. “You look like you would have beat my ass in little league so hard I told my mom I didn’t want to play anymore.” Frank breaks off into a wobbly laugh, something feeling right about the joke. He thinks she would have liked it. “You-you had a big family, uh, from the pictures.”  Frank says, voice cracking for a moment as he tucks her photos in, right against her chest. “I think- I know you were very loved. Both of you were.”

He steps back to look at both of them again, lined up in this lonely little airlock.

Frank doesn’t know the right words. And he doesn’t even remember any he can borrow. He’s a blank slate. All he’s got is himself and it doesn’t feel like enough. “I’m sorry. That I’m the only one that made it. And that I don’t know what I’m doing.”

“I’ll make sure that you don’t…that you didn’t…” Frank swallows against the thickness in his throat as the room blurs and his cheeks grow wet. His voice feels tight, air suffocated out of him between he can put it to words. “I promise.”

Frank slowly steps back out of the airlock, sealing the inner door. He lingers for a long somber moment, just taking them in through the window, before he finally finds it in him to press the button. The airlock cycles as it reduces the atmosphere inside to a fraction of the ship’s. A green light clicks on over the outer door and it opens. The small difference in pressure sends them out of the airlock in a gentle drifting motion, slipping out into the inky night outside the ship like a ship gently put to sea. 

They disappear into the silence of space together, quiet and gentle, as the Hail Mary presses forward on its original path. Frank closes his eyes, resting his head against the glass for a long moment as he breathes. In and out...in and out.

And then he seals the outer door and turns around.

He doesn't know who he is and he’s lightyears from anyone who can tell him, but Frank made a promise and he intends to keep it. Now he just has to figure out how.

- - -

Frank is left mostly undisturbed in his lab.

Ironically the people who talk to him most are the other Astrophage labs, spread across the globe, sharing whenever they find something promising or interesting or just plain confusing.

He knows about a team in Columbia that were able to make Astrophage interact with magnetic fields, steering them around inconsistently. None of them are sure if that’s important yet so the information is distributed just in case. 

Another team in Istanbul sacrificed one of their sample Astrophage to detail the cell’s internal make-up. It’s complete with mitochondria and organelles (and water, but Frank’s not talking about that right now-). The point is: Astrophages aren’t, at their core, very different from cells found on Earth.

Which opens up a debate as any discovery in science is want to do - how is that even possible? Did Astrophage originate on Earth or did they seed Earth with cellular life on a cosmic fly-by billions of years ago? Or is this simply the only format that can sustain life and they resemble each other through pure coincidence?

There’s no way to know which makes it incredibly rich for discussion. And somewhat bitchy emails. But mostly discussion.

Frank stares at his Astrophage through the microscope. It’s important to make eye contact with the subject of conversation. “Most of my coworkers, that’s what I’m calling the global scientific community for our purposes, I hope you don’t mind-” Frank narrates to his small world-ending friends. “- they’re focused on how you work. What connects to what, how you possibly store as much energy as you do. The works.”

Frank leans back as he stares at the slide with his naked eye. There are plenty of teams focused on how. 

Frank wants a why. 

Why are Astrophage traveling between the Sun and Venus? They have to be getting something out of the exchange. It’s time he figured out an alien organism’s lifecycle. He leans over the lab table, grateful that he’s been cleared to work without a hazmat suit (thank you oxygen-based environment), to scoop up the walkie-talkie. “Donnie, are you there?”

Donnie, a babysitter assigned to him by Robby and vaguely unwilling sounding board, answers after a beat. “Still yes.”

Okay, it’s time to start with the most basic questions first. An Astrophage on the sun, with no sense of communication, decides it’s ready to travel: how does it make that happen?

“I’m a microorganism trying to find Venus in the darkness of space.” Frank says, standing up and pacing almost absentmindedly. “How do I do it?”

“Light?” Donnie offers.

“They’re coming from the sun.” Frank says as he shakes his head, even as he follows Donnie’s logic through. “That’s like looking into someone’s high beams and being asked to count passengers in the car, there’s no way they’re making anything out.”

“How do you see without light?”

Frank chews on that for a moment before his head shoots up.

Spectroscopy.

Venus’s atmosphere is almost entirely carbon dioxide. If Astrophage were reacting to the plant’s CO2 signature, it would be overwhelmingly clear even in the proximity to the sun.

“Carbon dioxide.” Frank says, clapping his hands together. “New plan: we’re making Venus.” 

“Making- you know that you don’t have a budget, right?” Donnie asks, confusion thick in his voice.

“Don’t need it.” Frank says, already headed for a low cabinet on the far side of the lab. “We already have what we need. We’re going to fake Venus’s gas signature. If our little friends are attracted to it, they’ll react to our simulated CO2 the same as the real thing.”

“Huh. Fate of the world hangs on tricking space bugs.”

“Be serious. The fate of the world hangs on us tricking space organisms with bad eyesight.” Frank clarifies, listening to Donnie snort on the other side of the line. “Much easier for us.”

In the end, Frank’s CO2 box creation isn’t winning beauty awards anytime soon, but it’s functional and that’s the most important thing. He has a box with clear panels on all five sides and a white light bulb sitting in the center. Each of the panels has been covered with a light filter that will mimic the emission of CO2 as if the light being given off is from the gas itself.

To any CO2 sensitive microorganism, it’ll look like a pretty formidable recreation of Venus.

“Ready to do this thing?” Frank asks, standing back to look at the set up for a moment. 

“Is something going to happen?” Donnie asks with a clear smirk in his voice. Rude. Just because there have been a few false starts in this whole process doesn’t mean Frank will take his doubt lying down.

“Let’s find out!” Frank grins, dropping into his stool to look through the microscope. “Three, two, one-” Frank hits the light.

His three dots disappear.

Not turn translucent or wiggle in new directions. Disappear. As soon as Frank switches his mini Venus on, they shoot off the slide, presumably towards their new CO2-rich target.

“Uh…” Frank blinks at his suddenly empty dish.

“What?” Donnie asks over the radio.

“I lost the sample.”

“You what?” Donnie asks like he can’t believe someone would be dumb enough to lose globally-irreplaceable biological samples. Frank’s glad that he can really make a name for himself like this.

“Great news, we know that they like carbon dioxide. Bad news, they left the slide and I don’t know where they went.” Frank says, trying to run through next steps. 

“Look around.” Donnie’s voice has fallen flat in an incredible recreation of almost every authority figure Frank’s ever worked with. It’s weird how they all seem to find that same tone.

“They’re ten-microns wide. This is not a ‘where are my glasses’ kind of situation.” Frank huffs, scrubbing a hand through his hair as he looks around in a mild (mild) panic. It’s admittedly not great to lose irreplaceable samples.

There’s no knowing where the Astrophage went when they left the slide. Maybe they made it to the box. Maybe they got lost and veered off course. All they know for sure is that they are somewhere in the (thankfully) sealed lab right now. Hooray for little miracles.

Donnie groans. “Can’t science tell you where they are? A scanner or a filter or something? You tricked them with a filter, use another one to find them.”

“I mean, there aren’t magic X-ray goggles…hmm.” Frank pauses, mind cutting in with one potentially crucial exception. That might just work…

“Hmm?” Donnie echos, latching onto the opening with both hands.

“Astrophage do give off IR light.” Frank says as he looks around the lab. They should be the only thing giving off IR light. If he makes something to look for just that band of light, he might be able to hunt them down. 

It’s a goofy plan, but it is a plan. 

Donnie is all for it if it means that they can avoid an incredibly awkward phone call to Robby. And potentially being fired.

Frank’s not sure how getting fired works on secret government taskforces. Probably best if he doesn't find out.

It takes more than a little finagling to build a functional bit of hardware, but thirty-eight minutes later sees Frank as the proud owner of a brand new pair of IR goggles. He’s attached an infrared sensitive cameras on the outside of a VR headset that project the view that they pick up into his view. It should let him walk around the lab and pick up anything giving off an IR signature. 

Astrophage, here he comes.

“Entering phase two: finding our incredibly valuable samples again.” Frank narrates, reaching out and flipping the lab lights off. He needs the highest level of contrast if he has any hope of this working.

“Fingers crossed.” Donnie hums over the radio.

“This is a room of science, uncross those fingers.” Frank grins as he pulls on his headset. 

“Don’t you talk to me or my fingers again. Find our dots.”

“Sir yes sir.” 

The complete darkness around him leaves him blind and stumbling for a moment. It’s a completely sealed room so there are no cracks to let in any other light. Just Frank and some rogue Astrophage. Frank moves carefully through the room, partially so he doesn’t fall over a stool and partially because he’s not quite sure what will happen if someone steps on an Astrophage. He sweeps his eyes over the path in front of him as he makes his way to towards the Venus box just in case.

First things first, investigate the box that made them go crazy to begin with.

“How are we looking?” Donnie asks over the walkie-talkie.

A small fleck of pink illuminates Frank’s vision, sitting on the side of the box. “We’ve got one! And two!” Frank narrates with a not insignificant amount of relief. He shifts slightly to look at another side. “And that makes three! We got 'em!”

“There we go.” Donnie laughs as the tension that's held both of them for the last forty minutes finally slips away.

Then Frank twists to look at the last side of the box and sucks in a sudden breath. “Oh.”

“What?” Donnie asks immediately. “What’s happening, what’s oh?”

Frank stares at the fourth glowing point of IR emissions sitting in front of him. “There’s another one.”

“What?”

Frank has been staring at these things for days. One, two, three. He knows them forwards and backwards. This one hasn’t been there. Which means that one of the Astrophage divided during their experiment.

They just got Astrophage to reproduce.

“It’s a fourth Astrophage. We made another one.” Frank says as an incredulous laugh bubbles up in his chest. “Shit!” Frank says, hands in the air as he turns in a circle like he’s waiting for someone to react. “I- shit!”

Astrophage go to Venus to reproduce. That’s the only reason that he would have a fourth after they sensed the CO2 signature. So they go to the planet and reproduce somewhere in the upper atmosphere (wherever the CO2 triggers their reproduction cycle) and then they go back to the Sun. Garcia’s reports about the sun - the exponential rate of energy dimming. The Astrophage are storing it, using it for energy and propulsion and maybe food. The sun is where they collect resources and Venus is where they go to reproduce.

That’s a fucking life cycle.

Scooping his wayward samples off of the (now shut off) Venus box and back into a petri dish that he immediately seals, Frank is cutting the lights back on and dialing Robby’s number before he can fully think through what he’s doing.

Robby picks up on the first ring.

“Dr. Langdon. Find something?”

“Yeah.” Frank breathes, staring at the petri dish holding his new little buddy. “We got Astrophage to reproduce. And I know why they're going to Venus.”

That makes Robby pause. “You managed to breed Astrophage?”

“Yeah.”

“Without killing it?”

What a glimpse into what someone else must have been trying. Frank has a rare spot of empathy for Robby having to listen to reports like that all day. He decides that their little ‘I lost the Astrophage’ moment can remain an in-the-lab secret. “I had three, now I have four. All alive.”

Robby goes quiet on the line for a moment. “Stay there.”

Frank pulls the phone away from his ear to see that the call has already been ended. “Oh, goodbye to you too-”

It's no more than thirty second later that Donnie is stepping into the lab with a tilt of his head and a serious expression. "Robby wants to see you in person. Now."

Frank blinks at him, holding up the dish. “Should I bring my sample-”

“They’ll be brought after you. Come on.” Donnie says, already turning around and heading for the exit.

Oh. Okay.

Frank jogs after him with a small backwards glance at the other security guards (hovering around the outside of the lab with wide eyes). They fall out of sight as Donnie leans them around a corner towards an exit. He pauses for just a moment as Frank catches up, smile cracking over his cheeks as he raises his fist.

Frank bumps it with a matching grin. That's a little better.

The less said about traveling by car to helicopter to jet to ship, the better. Frank has recently learned that he’s terribly nauseous when moving at Too Many Miles Per Hour. He could have done without learning that fact, but now he knows it incredibly intimately. 

Hooray!

Stumbling off the jet, Frank’s eyes twist over the swarms of people moving over the flight deck of the massive (what Frank thinks might be Chinese) aircraft carrier. This doesn’t seem like a place he’s supposed to be. Most locations he's finding himself lately don't seem like somewhere he's supposed to be.

Still Frank catches sight of Robby, a single point of stillness in the chaos, and he makes his way over as undisruptively as he can (he certainly gets in the way of at least six people but it’s the thought that counts).

“How did you do it?” Robby asks him as soon as he’s within speaking distance..

Oh, cool. Everyone’s decided to use their bonkers manners right now.

“They use the gas emissions. For CO2. That’s how they find Venus, out in all of, you know, out there.” Frank explains, trying to pull himself together after what adds up to probably eight straight hours of travel. “So they go there and the CO2 makes them divide and then they all rock on back to the sun to get energy before they do it again.”

Frank’s not sure that’s his best explanation, but it’s all that his dried out brain can pull together at the moment. 

Robby directs them into and through the ship without interrupting Frank’s rambling. “Can you recreate it? At scale?”

Frank snorts. Probably, but who’d want that? “It wouldn’t be hard. Elbow shaped ceramic tube with Astrophage inside. Make one side Venus and the other side the sun. Boom, baby phage bouncing back and forth.”

“Good.” Robby says as he slips in front of Frank to open the last door. “Now take a breath and I want you to explain that again.”

“Explain it again-” Frank repeats dumbly as he follows Robby into…a massive hanger.

It’s filled with chairs and tables and a giant pull down screen at the front like some strange kind of makeshift conference room. The giant hanger bay doors at the far end of the room letting in natural light kill that illusion in its tracks. That doesn’t seem to affect any of the dozens of people sitting at said chairs and tables though, now staring at Frank as he stumbles into the front of the room on sheer momentum.

What the fuck.

Frank spins around to give Robby his best ‘what the hell’ face, but Robby is already pressing him forward into the spotlight. “This is Dr. Frank Langdon from a lab in the United States. He figured out how to reproduce Astrophage.”

The room wastes no time bursting with questions, each voice overlapping with the last like they can’t hear each other speak.

“How did you make them reproduce?”

“How long does it take?”

“Why weren’t we informed of this?”

“Ahh. Okay.” Frank winces as he’s reminded of his class five minutes before a quiz trying to get him to reteach a whole lesson. Frank shoots Robby another look (that he ignores) and then gives his best smile (grimace) to the group. “Astrophage look for the gas emissions in Venus’s atmosphere. The CO2 portion of it at least. So they leave the sun and go towards the carbon dioxide. And then when they get there, they, uh, start getting down.”

A quiet chuckle echoes back to Frank from the awkwardly silent room. Thank you random stranger.

Robby immediately steps in at that, tugging him over to a seat at the end of the nearest table which Frank slumps into it heavily. Sleep has not been a priority the last few days and it's coming back with a vengeance.

“You’re sure about these results?” Someone on the left asks.

“We can confirm.” Another voice, the one who laughed, cuts in before Frank can respond. He squints at her across the room. He swears her face looks familiar. B- something. Something clicks in the back of his mind. Dr. Baran Al-Hashimi. He’d met her at a conference a few years back, before he published that article that he’s forty-eight percent sure he didn’t name her in.

Then her words catch up to him.

“We’ve already recreated his results. They’re sound. We estimate there is approximately an eight day doubling period for Astrophage.” Dr. Al-Hashimi explains to the room.

Another doctor pipes up next as he looks to Frank directly. “How long would it take to make two million kilograms of Astrophage?”

“How long would it take to make-” Frank laughs, frowning slightly at the question. “Why would you need that much Astrophage?”

Eyes immediately slide back to Robby at that question (oops) as voice kick up again.

“Has he not been briefed?”

“What’s his clearance?”

Frank doesn’t know what to make of the room, but the gravity Robby seems to have as every question is directed to him is particularly interesting. Frank is suddenly overwhelmed with the very clear mental image that he has been bothering someone very important this whole time. That’s fun. Important people could stand to be more inconvenienced.

Robby stands up, silencing the room, as he sighs from somewhere deep in his chest. He locks eyes with Frank. “I hereby grant you top secret clearance to all information relating to Project Hail Mary.”

Frank wants to open his mouth and give Robby the same permissions with Project What The Hell Are You Talking About but no one else is smiling like Robby just told some kind of joke. “What is that, exactly?”

Robby waves a hand towards the screen at the front and someone gets a presentation pulled up in a matter of seconds. It seems rehearsed, like this is not the first time someone has been briefed crash-course style.

“The sun is not the only star that is dimming.” Robby says as the screen behind him shows a scaled out picture of their local star cluster. The dots slowly become red behind him. “There is a clear path of Astrophage infection, each star spreading it to the ones around it. Except for one.”

“Tau Ceti?” Frank completes for him, staring at the map. He’s spent a lot of time putting up fun space posters in his classroom. Frank knows the locals pretty well.

“That’s right. It’s well within the infected cluster of stars, only eleven point nine lightyears away, but it’s not showing any signs of dimming.”

“Why?” Frank asks.

Why, how, what the fuck. Those seem to be the only responses to astrological news the past few months. First their star was dimming for no reason, then it was discovered that it was from rudimentary alien life. Now that alien life seems to have been spreading across hundreds of lightyears of space and there's an exception to what stars it hunkers down at?

“That’s our question.” Robby says simply. “Which is why we’re building a ship to go there and find out.”

Frank blinks. “Go there- it’s light years away, we can’t just make an interstellar ship.”

“Yes we can, the ship isn’t the hard part. The energy to power the ship is.” Robby pauses for a beat. “Was.”

“Astrophage.” Frank says, glancing back at the person who first brought up the Astrophage quantity. Two million kilograms. A massive quantity of fuel. Astrophage certainly gets its bang for its buck though, Frank thinks as he works through the energy each cell of Astrophage is capable of generating. Weight versus thrust, nothing else in nature has the ratio they have. “Astrophage is the fuel.”

“Exactly.” Robby says as the screen switches to a view of the prospective ship. A small calculation totaling up two million kilograms of Astrophage needed sits in the corner of the screen. “There won’t be enough fuel for a round trip so the astronauts will send their work back to Earth on probes.”

“And the astronauts…” Frank asks quietly, fighting a shrug to soften his own words. “Die in space?”

“Yes.” Robby agrees simply.

Jesus Christ. Frank blinks at the flat fact of those words. The rest of the room doesn’t react, having heard it who knows how many times already. Still Frank looks around for a moment, almost incredulous. “Any other plans? Anything else anyone is kicking around?” 

Robby seems to expect that reaction. 

“The chances of this working are minuscule. There are an almost infinite number of things that could go wrong with it." His eyes are firm, direct as he speaks to Frank like they’re the only two people in the room sharing a single set of undeniable facts. It’s strangely humbling. “It’s an almost impossible long-shot.”

A scrambling fight against the stars themselves for humanity to survive.

“A Hail Mary.” Frank completes, stomach swooping.

Robby nods. “Exactly.”

- - -

Frank chews on his latest meal from Mary, an incredibly acceptable burrito. Thank you tummy for finally being ready for solid foods.

Things are slipping into place easier now, filling out the world around him in more detail. 

Where is he? Answered: Tau Ceti. 

Why is he here? Answered: Tau Ceti isn’t acting infected like all of the neighboring stars and Frank is here to figure out why that is.

How was Tau Ceti unaffected? Unknown. That’s the million dollar question in Frank’s lap. It’s a big solar system and Frank is still just one human. It’s like trying to find a planet-saving needle in a few billion square miles of space. 

The comas make more sense now at least. There can’t be more square footage on this ship than an average suburban house. No crew would last the journey here without going crazy if they were rattling off of each other the whole time. A crew that sleeps their way through a thirteen year journey is a crew that’s still in one piece enough to solve the Petrova problem.

Well, that was the hope at least.

Frank’s eyes drift to the now empty pods, tucked back into their wall slots. They don’t feel haunted, just somber. A quiet reminder of the stakes. 

Thirteen years on Earth for the Hail Mary to reach a new star. Thirteen years for any data found to be sent back to Earth. Twenty six years of Earth waiting for the slim possibility of an answer to their problem. All the while, Frank will have only experienced a couple years in the coma coming here initially. More than three, less than five. He almost wants to laugh as he chews through the numbers (and the rest of his food). Relativity is a mess to wrap someone’s head around at the college level. He can only imagine the mental gymnastics teaching it to his kids would have set off - speed and mass and light all tangled together in a confusing net that says going faster makes time run slower.

Frank can only imagine the arguments that would have set off.

Still, Frank is the only one to have skipped those long years of waiting. He has some work to do to make everyone’s patience worth it. So Frank heads to his favorite (least favorite) room of the ship: the cockpit.

He stayed away from it after his first exploratory visit when he woke up. Too much bad news and too little answers. And if Frank is being honest with himself, he was just scared of what he’d find.

Now though? Frank made a promise. One he intends to keep.

On behalf of his crew, and his kids, and everyone else back home that he must have volunteered to protect. He’s going to find a way to stop Astrophage from killing Earth, send the answers back home in the probes, and then he’ll…die. 

He hasn’t gotten that far yet. 

Hopefully it won’t come up too soon.

Pulling himself up into the cockpit, which is just as overwhelming as the first time, Frank settles into the pilot’s seat more out of an effort to avoid hitting stray buttons than anything else. 

Pilot detected. Mary hums overhead smoothly.

“Yeah, no for sure.” Frank agrees, glancing at the ceiling out of habit. He absolutely is not a pilot, but 'fake it 'til you make it' has been a life long motto and he intends to live by those powerful words. Frank runs his eyes over the wall in front of him, picking out different labels and buttons. The screens seem to be interchangeable as Frank scrolls around, trying not to trigger anything important as he reads over the different panels that he can pull up. Navigation. Structure. Fuel. 

Frank clicks on one at random. 

The Navigation page fills two screens with ticking data. His current speed is shown as a little over seven thousand kilometers per second. Looking between the map and the ship’s navigation logs show that it’s actually slowing. Which is impressive because eight kilometers per second is all that’s needed to escape the sun’s orbit. They had been moving very, very quickly.

The ship seems to have rotated to face its engines at Tau Ceti as part of the arrival process, thrusting away from Tau Ceti to accelerate smoothly into its orbit. That would be known as deceleration to the layman, but Frank isn’t so he won’t. 

That’s good to know. Scrolling through the Navigation page a little deeper Frank finds a countdown. Three days until he reaches the system.

A jolt runs down his spine, but Frank straightens up purposefully. 

Frank’s not exactly sure how long his freakout-binge-coma awakening was, but it can’t have been much longer than a couple weeks. The system must have been set up to wake him up shortly before arrival so that he could adjust before getting to work.

What good use Frank made of his time.

Still it gives him something concrete to work with. He’s got three days to get ready for showtime.

Frank tabs around to other panels, soaking in the information. The discovery of a Petrovascope, a telescope built specifically to pick up on the IR light given off by Astrophage, is particularly exciting. Figuring out if Tau Ceti has a Petrova line is step one when he finally reaches the star.

If Tau Ceti simply hasn’t been infected yet or if there’s no carbon dioxide rich planet in the system for Astrophage to migrate to-

It’s not worth dwelling on.

Frank itches to turn it on now, but he holds himself back. There would be no point. His own engines are giving off such a massive amount of IR light that it would white out the scope completely.

Frank also manages to locate the probes under the panel titled ‘Beatles’ (Frank would love a word with the person that thought tricking an amnesiac into thinking there were a bunch of bugs on his ship was funny). There are four of them in the nose of the ship, each labeled with their own 1960’s psychedelic pop rock band member, and complete with their own tiny Astrophage-powered spin drive engine, fuel compartments, and multi-terabyte storage devices.

The days seem to slip away as Frank throws himself into learning the systems with everything he’s got. Frank eats his meals (better every day now that they’re solid), runs his eyes over the numbers in the cockpit just to ensure they’re ticking in the right way, and clicks through more of the buttons and tabs until the system layout starts to stick. 

Rinse, repeat.

Rinse, repeat.

The cockpit isn’t the only place Frank throws himself into the deep end in an attempt to force sudden competency. The lab computers are equally immersive with a particularly sexy addition: full access to the entire Library of Congress.

Frank knew that there had to be a giant collection of solid state drives tucked into the ship from the number of videos Mary could recall for him at a moment’s notice, but the lab’s library blows those out of the water. Every scientific paper, article, journal, and novel published since humans have published stories is included in the ship’s system. There’s no limit on the subject either. Tabloid magazines and romance novels all the way up to equipment manuals for things Frank's almost positive they don't have with them (he's willing to gamble there isn't a Ford F-150 tucked somewhere nearby) to give Frank the answer to any possible question that could cross his mind.

He’s not sure why he’d need to know the sound muffling capabilities of blue whale blubber, but he’s got it. 

Just in case. 

Robby didn’t seem like the type to assume he knew best. Over-preparation to the extreme. Redundancies and back-ups and double checks. Who knew what they would need to know to finish the mission? Not Robby. Best to send the full scope of human knowledge instead, much simpler.

Energy buzzes in Frank’s skin as he reads and navigates and gets his hands on everything, ready to move in whatever direction tugs at him hardest. He doesn’t seem to be a very patient person. Or focused. Still, something in him wishes the timer in the cockpit would stop ticking down to his arrival, a quiet anxiety settled deep into his chest. This wake up period was just for him to shake off the cobwebs. 

When he reaches Tau Ceti, the real work begins. 

- - -

Approaching Tau Ceti orbit. Engine cutoff imminent. Mary announces proudly.

Frank pulls himself into the cockpit for the big day, dressed in his best (it’s a jumpsuit, it’s always a jumpsuit). A knot sits in his stomach, but Frank breathes through it, putting on a good show of bravery for the AI who doesn’t give a shit. 

Ten. Nine. Eight.

Frank settles into the pilot’s seat. He’s fine, it’s okay. He must have done dozens of zero G practice sessions. He’s good. Even if his body can’t quite remember that right now. “The engines are turning off, but I’m fine- it’s good.”

Seven. Six.

“Deep breath.” Frank pep talks, flexing his hands around the armrests of the pilot’s seat.

Five. 

“This is cool, this is fine-”

Four. Three.

Fuck he doesn’t wanna do this.

Two.

One.

The ship’s engines shut off all at once as the ship hit the coordinates it was given to enter Tau Ceti’s orbit. Without the constant thrust of the spin drives powering the ship, the Earth-like gravity Frank has been enjoying for the last four years disappears.

Frank screams. 

Mind over matter apparently only goes so far.

“Fuck!” Frank says, tangling his arms in the seatbelt of the pilot’s seat as his legs drift away from the seat. Why isn’t he strapped in? What the hell is wrong with him? “Fuck, fuck, fuck.”

Welcome to Tau Ceti. Mary chimes, failing to read the room.

Neil Armstrong did better on the ‘first words during a major leap forward for humanity’ thing, but who gives a shit. Frank is a man of high emotions and he intends to share them. The cockpit absorbs his colorful language and less-than-graceful maneuvering without comment as he slowly acclimates. 

The power of the human mind. At a certain point, anything can become mundane.

Frank feels his fluttery heartbeat slowly fall back into a normal rhythm as he forces air in and out of his lungs. He lets out a laugh as he stares at his hair floating away from his forehead, somehow parallel to the chair he was supposed to be sitting in. “See, not so bad. Just like I said. I barely even noticed we stopped.” 

Petrovascope is now operational.

“Thank you, Mary.” Frank says, spinning himself around in what would have been an award winning handstand on Earth to pull up the panel and wiggle himself back down into his seat.

The Petrovascope will be able to tell him definitively if Tau Ceti has a Petrova line. If it does, then Frank can figure out what makes this system so special compared to all of its neighbors. If there isn’t? It means that there isn’t a solution here. Tau Ceti just hasn’t been infected yet and there’s nothing to send back to Earth.

Frank has never prayed so desperately for sunlight-eating microorganisms.

The scope opens up and Frank orients it towards Tau Ceti, scanning the star’s pole slowly. He sucks in a lingering breath, tense and uncertain-

There! 

Frank zooms in immediately on the rich red line arcing away from the sun.

“Yes!” Frank cheers, smacking the armrest (everything else in the room is far too expensive to be hitting for fun). 

Tau Ceti has a Petrova line. It’s infected just like all the other stars. There’s just something here that is keeping the Astrophage under control. 

Frank leans back and lets out a deafening laugh. The list of what to do from here doesn’t get easier, but it’s standing on solid ground now that he knows there’s something to find in the first place. “Mary, are you seeing this?” 

Command not understood. 

“Oh my god, don’t ruin this for me.” Frank groans at her, turning back to the scope. He needs to figure which of the exoplanets it’s heading for so he knows where to start his search-

Part of the Petrova line is missing. 

Gone. Disappeared in the last minute of celebration.

What the fuck.

Frank shifts the scope towards Tau Ceti to find the line leaving the star just like before. Following its path, the line cuts out again at the exact same point like someone reached out and just erased part of it. Did his engines mess with their migration pattern? If that was possible, shouldn’t someone have figured that out while the Hail Mary was still in the solar system?

“Who broke the space?” Frank mumbles, fumbling with the scope view. Maybe there’s something on the scope or a blob of debris. He can’t have broken everything this quickly into being in a new solar system, Frank refuses to accept that.

Blip-A detected.

“Blip-A?” Frank asks, fighting the urge to look up at the ceiling as he wiggles the scope. “What’s that?”

Mary continues to help as much as she ever does by going silent.

Great. 

Then something moves in the corner of Frank’s eye. 

Outside the cockpit window. 

Frank twists to look at it instinctively as it slowly slides into view. He…can’t understand what he’s looking at. His seatbelt floats away from him silently as Frank pushes himself towards the window to look outside with wide eyes. 

There’s an object between him and the Petrova line, just a few hundred meters away from his ship. Massive and almost golden and covered in long thin protrusions spread across its hull.

Hull because it’s not an asteroid. 

It’s a ship.

The metallic surface of it catches sunlight, strangely beautiful in the stark contrast. The long spindly protrusions coming off of it stretch far past the edges of Frank’s ship, dwarfing him completely. It’s a baffling design. No human would make a ship like that, the drag alone would get them laughed out of any planning room before they could finish explaining themselves.

So he’s out here in an alien solar system next to an astronomically advanced spaceship…that wasn’t built by humans. 

Frank just met their neighbors.

“Holy fu-”